Newsletter

Susan Catron: Fast news vs. factual news

You may have wondered about the newspaper’s deliberative approach to the news that Paula Deen admitted she’s used racist terms in her lifetime.

It’s a fair question.

Here’s a rundown of the thought process — agree or disagree, it’s fine. The point for me is that it’s a dandy time to have a discussion of fast news vs. news with context that helps you understand a story or event or a person.

At that point, we didn’t have a copy of the deposition and — as is our standard practice in any civil case — we decided to see it for ourselves before running anything.

Late in the evening, we did get a copy and when we authenticated it, courts reporter Jan Skutch also discovered there was more information available than the leaked deposition.

We decided quickly to read the deposition along with other associated pieces others apparently didn’t have or didn’t look for. It’s just not responsible for us to do otherwise.

National media standards for this type of thing are low and reporting can be incomplete at best.

It was clear that most early reports cherry-picked pieces and parts to get the most attention and left out any context. It requires responsibility to do our own work instead of being a parrot.

And here’s the difference: It’s not a national story for us. It’s local.

Deen and her family are international celebrities, but they live and work here. They are neighbors, business people, employers and fundraisers.

Whatever they do reflects on Savannah, too. We definitely want to be timely in all our work, but it has to be right and fair. We weren’t convinced we could fulfill those requirements by turning this civil court employment dispute in to a quick story. We opted to read the hundreds of pages of court depositions from both sides and present today’s story from all of it.

We’re just not going to fall into a trap that the “instant news” environment has created. We’ve always said we plan to be right, first — not first and right later.

Technology now facilitates a world where news bits are fast and often unsourced or badly sourced.

Recent examples of how this problem manifests itself include the ever-changing bomb count at the Boston Marathon, as well as the ever-moving numbers in the death counts for the Oklahoma tornadoes and the incorrect early identification of the Sandy Hook shooter.

Is it more important to get wrong information fast than getting the correct information a little later?

Honestly, it’s a question we all need to ponder. The answer to our future lies in the standards we choose.

If we as citizens are going to accept bad information first, then we also must accept the responsibility to follow the story or event beyond the first headlines to facts that emerge as an often-muddled scene becomes clear. We also must pledge not to allow politicians and others to use sound bites as weapons or fact without context.

Are we ready for that?

Susan Catron is executive editor of the Savannah Morning News and savannahnow.com. Contact her at susan.catron@savannahnow.com or 912-652-0327.